Surveys and Routes

The way west was often one of conjecture as survey after survey was conducted across the vast distance from Winnipeg to British Columbia. The Carleton Trail from Fort Garry, just outside Winnipeg, west through Fort Carleton and Fort Edmonton to the Yellow Head Pass, a distance of 1,160 miles was the route taken for half a century to reach the west and it was assumed this would be the route of the Pacific Railway as well. It was not to be, although many years later another railway, the Grand Trunk Pacific would follow it. It is in fact, this route that Canadian National as successor to GTP follows to this day much to its advantage.

John Palliser (left) and James Hector. Alberta Provincial Library

Much of the land was unexplored in the 19th. Century and its worth unknown. It was for this reason that two expeditions were undertaken beginning in 1857. The British Imperial government backed one led by John Palliser (biography) was to examine every aspect of the country; minerals, agricultural and settlement possibilities from Lake Superior to the Rockies. With him was James Hector who would discover the famed Kicking Horse Pass named in an incident when he was kicked by his horse and thought by the party to be dead. He came to as they were starting to bury him!

Palliser condemned the Lake Superior route for the railway and declared the southern prairies to be a "desert". The expedition sent out by Canada came to a slightly different conclusion. Led by Henry Yule Hind (biography) and Simon James Dawson (biography), it was less critical of the Lake Superior route and while agreeing the south prairies was to be avoided, saw the area to the north where the Carleton Trail cut through as being a "fertile belt".

Sandford Fleming

An actual route had to be surveyed and Sandford Fleming (biography), as engineer-in-chief, took charge in April 1871. Twenty-one survey parties set out to explore and locate a line. The task was a daunting one and over the six years forty-six thousand miles were walked! This was followed by twelve thousand miles that were chosen to be properly surveyed. Pathfinders left blazes for the axemen to hack their way through the bush, to be followed by the chainmen who carefully staked it out in one-hundred foot sections. Next came the transit men who calculated the angle of each curve, who were followed by rodmen and levellers who inscribed the altitudes on bench marks every half-mile. In the end there were six hundred thousand stakes and twenty-five thousand bench marks! It had cost three and one-half million dollars (a lot of money in those days) and the lives of thirty-eight men.

The work was terrible, men worked under extreme conditions for little money and sufferred greatly through harsh winters, sometimes near starvation. Yet, it went on, year-after-year as the government kept doing surveys to avoid making decisions. Nothing much has changed in this regard with governments more than a century later.

Walter Moberly (seated center, facing left) with his survey crew in Victoria. BC Archives

Walter Moberly led yet another survey party after confidently bragging to Sir John A. that he could easily locate the line through the mountains. In fact, he had previously discovered Eagle Pass in the Gold Range (Monashees) when surveying for British Columbia simply by watching eagles fly through the mountains. He blazed these words on a tree: "This is the pass for the Overland Railway". He set out on July 20, 1871, the same day British Columbia joined Confederation. He could not find a way through the Howse Pass and just as he was setting out the next season to do this, word came from Sandford Fleming to abandon his work as the Yellow Head Pass route had been selected as the official route. Shortly after, Moberly quit, but, in an ironic twist of fate the famous Last Spike would be driven very near the spot where he had blazed that tree following a reversal of the route choice. Fleming was eased out by the government, dissatisfied with his work he was replaced May 22, 1880 by Collingwood Schreiber (biography) who brought in Major A. B. Rogers (biography) the man who gained fame and fortune as the discoverer of Rogers Pass, the way through the mountains.

The Syndicate had soon decided against Fleming's route after all and got Ottawa to change it to a much more shorter southern route to the Rockies saving about 150 miles but forever burdening the CPR with formidable steep grades that were and still are, more costly to operate over. More than a century of changes including tunnels and grade reductions has still left the CPR at a disadvantage in crossing the Rockies compared to its rival CN which uses the former Grand Trunk Pacific route through the Yellow Head Pass, the lowest crossing in North America of the Continental Divide.

The two routes

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